43 results
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Reconfigurable Terracotta Facades
This study, completed by an interdisciplinary team from the University of Buffalo and Alfred University explores a thermal mass application using terracotta blocks that can be reconfigured for different seasons.
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Designing With Composites: The Why, When and How
When we say composites, the reference is Fiber-Reinforced-Polymer composites, FRP. The most common glues or the polymer matrix of FRP is polyester or epoxy-based resins with variations that boggle the mind.
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Circadian Daylight Performance of the Electrochromic Glazing
Electrochromic windows introduced to building market as a smart glare control solution to provide visual comfort for building occupant. EC glazing ca…
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Terracotta 1912 to 2018
Center Three is a 100-year-old, one million square-foot building in Long Island City, New York that was constructed over the course of one year. It w…
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Separating Direct From Diffuse
An Enclosure-Integrated, Daylighting, Tracking Solar Collector (EIDTSC) has been developed for market which integrates into a building’s fenestration…
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High-Performance Building Facades
For architects, designers, engineers, manufacturers, consultants, and owners' representatives interested in methods for designing high-performance facades.
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Facade Technology in Educational Methodology
With facades becoming increasingly more complex, and performance a key objective, expertise becomes an important component of successful design proje…
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Talking Trees & Timber: In Buildings, Facades and Urban Habitat
Okay, okay; I have a tree-thing going on. This issue was supposed to be about green facades, but it morphed on me as I laid it out. But here’s the thing: if you don’t have a tree-thing going on, you should. I read The Overstory (graciously reviewed here by our Val Block) followed by a viewing of...
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Shaping Skin
The conventional modern facade is essentially flat, which creates the tendency toward visual monotony and problems for modulating daylight—both on th…
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Emissions Limits Critical to Climate Initiatives
There have been 26 Conferences on Climate Change sponsored by the United Nations. The most recent conference, COP 26, was held in 2021 in Glasgow, Scotland. With 200 countries in attendance, all eyes were set on achieving the goal of limiting the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
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Tactics to Expand Diversity and Inclusion in the Workforce: Mentoring and Apprentice Programs
I remember taking a career test when I was in middle school. The outcome? I had a supposed interest in becoming a forest ranger. This seemed odd to me--in that I lived in a large metropolitan city and had never been in a forest.
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2021 Construction Forecast
2020 has been an unusual year, to say the least, presenting a challenge to those entities keen on clarifying what the near future may hold and how it may impact industry performance. Following is a sampling of what some of these entities are saying, with links to more information.
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Reconfigurable Terracotta Facade
The traditional building facade as a permanent construction does not actively respond to the differing needs from varying weather conditions. Convent…
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Sustainable Silicone
Silicone materials have a long history in high performance building projects. Known for durability, they can reduce a building’s carbon footprint by …
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Invert Auto-Shading
Allowing sufficient amount of natural light while avoiding excessive sunlight penetration is often hard to achieve with static facade systems due to …
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Active and Energy Autonomous Window
Reducing GHG emissions related to energy use in buildings is a prominent obligation given their impact in terms of climate change. In this light, ene…
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Adaptive Building Envelope
Designing a multi-functional building envelope as an architectural façade, environmental interface and solar collector is a multi-objective explorati…
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Tree Magic - The Overstory
In this Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Richard Powers a series of fables is woven through a narrative populated by an expansive cast of unlikely characters, trees paramount among them; one a giant redwood named Mimas. Redwoods can live for thousands of years and grow to well over 300 feet tall.
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Bringing an Icon Into the Future: Willis Tower
Few buildings are as iconic as Willis Tower. Generations of Chicagoans have a collective memory of this building playing a role in their entire live…
